A lot, according to Hans Bader, who sees a coming quota system in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math enrollment:

Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised that “new guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges” spelling out “Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.” These guidelines will likely echo existing Title IX guidelines that restrict men’s percentage of intercollegiate athletes to their percentage in overall student bodies, thus reducing the overall number of intercollegiate athletes. (Under the three-part Title IX test created by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, where I used to work, colleges are allowed to temporarily comply by increasing the number of female athletes rather than cutting the number of male athletes, but the only viable permanent way to comply with its rule is to restrict men’s participation relative to women’s participation, reducing overall participation.) Thus, as Charlotte Allen notes, the Obama administration’s guidelines are likely to lead to “science quotas” based on gender.

Bader notes the hyprocrisy of gender-balancing quotas applying only in areas dominated by men:

Gender disparities in a major are not the product of sexism, but rather the differing preferences of men and women. The fact that engineering departments are filled mostly with men does not mean they discriminate against women anymore than the fact that English departments are filled mostly with women proves that English departments discriminate against men. The arts and humanities have well over 60 percent female students, yet no one seems to view that gender disparity as a sign of sexism against men. Deep down, the Obama administration knows this, since it is planning to impose its gender-proportionality rules only on the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not other fields that have similarly large gender disparities in the opposite direction.

Read the whole thing for the gory details of the coming War on Men in science.

So I’m looking for a teaching job in Colorado, and I click on a high school Math teacher’s little bio. She went to the Colorado School of Mines and majored in Chemical Engineering, on a basketball scholarship. Now she’s teaching high math, and getting a Masters in School something, leadership or administration or some such monster.

She got a basketball scholarship at a a school which has been 80-90% male, and is all engineering. If it weren’t for Title IX she probably wouldn’t have gone there. Somebody who wanted to be an engineer missed a chance to do so there because Mines gave that seat to a female basketball player. We are so messed up. I’m sure there are many more places she could have gone to get a Bachelor’s degree which would have allowed her to be a high school math teacher. That isn’t even the best preparation for teaching high school math. The opportunities for getting a degree in Chemical Engineering are much more limited.

According to her own bio, she never worked as an engineer. Women are far more likely to view athletic scholarships as a means to an end. They play and get an education. Men are far more likely to play as an ends to itself. Which could explain why so many men don’t graduate after their 4 year scholarships end. Female athletes have as great of time demand placed on them by their sport as do men. Women are more likely to keep their eyes on the prize of playing for a degree.

States have far fewer seats in their engineering programs than “future high school math teacher” programs. Why not save the engineering seats for people who are, you know, actually interested in being engineers? My gripe is that somebody who wanted to be an engineer didn’t have an opportunity.

It seems to me that if she was able to get the degree, then she deserved to be at the school and in the program. What she did with it later is really up to her. You’re making assumptions about what her intentions were. Life happens. Who knows why she made the choices she did?

Do you obsess over male graduates who don’t stay in the fields they studied in school?

I agree with your first paragraph, but the last sentence deserves comment.

Who knows why she made the choices she did?

For purposes of public and admissions policy, it’s legitimate to ask how various subpopulations of students utilize their degrees. That said, it should be obvious that reliable conclusions cannot be drawn from a small number of anecdotal cases.

Eat your broccoli!
Back in the 70’s, when the State of Colorado provided me with a chance for a college education, tuition was supposed to be 25% of the cost. Colorado taxpayers covered the other 75% of the costs. Since the taxpayers are subsidizing a student’s education, perhaps we get to be interested in what comes of our investment. Colorado is a mining state. If back in the 1874 when it was founded there was a greater need for geological engineering than today. Why should taxpayers subsidize anyone getting a degree to make that individual feel better about themselves, without the state getting a healthy return on their investment? Are we training too many engineers? At what point can we continue to justify public colleges and universities, when private ones can do the job just as well?

As for research, a lot of research is tied into company grants, and the companies and researchers benefit more than the taxpayers subsidizing the institution. In light of the higher education bubble, remember most states have systems like Colorado. For all those trillions in student debt, there is even more money spent by state governments in the hopes of having a better educated populace. We as taxpayers are subsidizing, nay we are also inflating, the growing higher education bubble.

Milwaukee, if I understand you correctly, you believe because taxpayers subsidize higher education, taxpayers should also be able to control the employment choices that graduates make. Did I get it right? Do you really want to go there?

And yes, right now we are training too many engineers. New graduates are having a very difficult time finding jobs. Which means, of course, the basketball player actually did her male colleagues a favor, by taking herself out of the market.

A funding perspective.
The point of public education is that we need an educated electorate. Having populace with a high literacy and hopefully some quantitative skills is generally agreed to be a Good Thing. Hence we have free education through high school.

If Colorado sees it needs geological engineers to further economic development, then subsidizing a school to produce geological engineers makes sense. If the need for engineers isn’t there, or as great, why does the state need to continue subsidizing that educational process? While we don’t need to be concerned about what a particular graduate did with his or her subsidized education, we should be concerned in general. If “many” are receiving a state education and are not using it in a way which gives the state a “reasonable” return on investment, we need to reconsider that investment. “many” and “reasonable” are in quotes, because I understand that “a few” who get an education and do something else is one thing, “loads and loads” is something else.

As for “reasonable” return on investment, consider the US Military. ROTC scholarships come with an expectation of 4 years of active duty after graduation. The government is controlling the employment choices of college graduates who received an ROTC scholarship. No problems there, right? Well, if Colorado is funding 75% of the cost of a college education, isn’t that a pretty substantial investment?

Has a college education, in anything the student wishes to study, become another “right”? As I pointed out before, if Colorado is funding 75% of higher education at it’s state universities and colleges, then every billion dollars of college tuition in student loans represents 3 billion dollars spent by the state.

Most of those that get an Engineering degree never work as Engineers, at least long. We are feeders for a vast number of other occupations; Engineers transfer out, no one ever transfers in.

There is now and always has been (although more severe than usually) a shortage of jobs for real Engineers.

Frankly, I would rather (by far) have my high school kid taught by a math teacher who could get through the rigorous ChemE program than one with the usual watered down “math for Education Majors” program.

Exactly. We can’t know why this person switched careers (although as others have noted that’s required for many if not most engineers), but no one majors in Chemical Engineering, a very applied math intensive field (applied fluid dynamics and thermodynamics) without learning worthwhile things.

I’m not really familiar with the field as a career, but as far as I know it’s very boom and bust. She very possibly entered the program when job prospects looked good and graduated when very few could find jobs.

We now have more female veterinarians than male veterinarians. Women tend toward “personal companion animals” when they are vets. Big old farm boys tend to be large animal vets. You know, the kind who get up at 2 in the morning and drive out to some farm in the middle nowhere and in the middle of a raging blizzard, so they can turn a calf who insists on being breach. He is going to use a glove which goes from his finger tips to his armpit. He’s going use all of that glove and then some. There aren’t many women willing to get up at 2 and go out in a blizzard, and if they did, they don’t have the arm strength or arm length to save the cow and the calf. But we insist on feminizing veterinary medicine and now have a shortage of large animal vets and crisis in our food production chain. Cows are where we get milk and steak, in case some of you city boys and girls didn’t catch on. “Hamburger” is a euphemism for “ground up dead cow”.

This kind of self-deluding nonsense has been encroaching on us for years. I saw it full-force in the Navy 15 years ago.

I spent two years running a damage control/firefighting team on an aircraft carrier. Most of the jobs, the women couldn’t hack it physically. So we gave them the easy jobs–phone talker, etc. The guys sweated and did the heavy lifting.

Great for morale! But hey–we had a gender-integrated damage control team–THAT was the important thing!

A few of us (in low voices, where we couldn’t be overheard) would mutter about how the men seemed to do all the heavy lifting.

Case in point: a scene on the National Geographic documentary about the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan: the men lug bombs (500 – 2000 lbs each) from storage to carts, while the women do the paperwork; the men push the carts to the flight deck and lift the bombs 4-5 feet to mount them on aircraft, the women turn a small ratchet to insert some tiny screws of some sort.

Such women as you speak of are few and far between. They arouse little comment or resentment, because they can do the job.

However, there are few of them in the military, which seems to be full of chip-on-the-shoulder little feminists. And “little” is not a term of demeaning condescension; it is a statement of physical attributes. The most savage feminist mouths often belong to those who aren’t much much above five feet tall and 100 lbs soaking wet.

Not long after 9/11 I was on several military installations. I noted a lot of those “little” troopers you describe, mostly around supply depots. Several appeared to have a very high fertility level, as displayed by their bulging fatigue blouses. I can’t imagine what it must be like on a ship.

Our ship was like a proverbial barnyard. Women routinely got pregnant and transferred off. It was either no-harm/no-foul to her career (“pregnancy is a medical condition no different than any other”–just like appendicitis or taking an enemy bullet), or more normally, got out with an Honorable Discharge (for medical reasons).

As for “bulging fatigue blouses,” they now even have…wait for it…camouflage maternity gear. That’s right, combat clothes for expectant mothers.

Veterinarians don’t make a lot of money, and it’s harder to get into vet school than med school, in many states. Maybe some don’t do it anymore because it isn’t worth it. Is it really the case that women are crowding out men (or certain women) that would take care of large animals, if only they could get in vet school? If that was the case, schools could have programs specifically for large animals, to ensure the supply. Don’t blame it on women.

That won’t work. As soon as the Title IX Nazis spot this subspecialty with an inordinate number of men, they will demand that the appropriate number of women be shoved into it.

I have yet to hear of a qualified woman who was refused entry into a STEM program, or was harassed out of it. Hell, there was a woman in my EE graduating class — and that was fifty-five years ago.

It is my firm belief that any woman who wants to can earn an engineering degree but —

1. She has to have a certain aptitude level, just like the men
2. She has to work hard, just like the men.
3. She has to really want the degree, just like the men.
4. She has to tolerate a minimum — a very minimum — level of teasing and horseplay, just like the men.

The Title IX tyrants do not — will not — judge by the interest of those who go into engineering. They judge only by the output, and the fact that there are more male engineering graduates than female is to them proof positive of discrimination.

You must be basing that opinion on the fact that you live in a metropolitan area. In my neck of the woods, central Texas, we probably have over a dozen vets and only one of them limits their practice to small animals. Every other one deals with not only small animals, but every other vet practice in the county has horse stalls and cattle holding pens. They didn’t build those for ambiance.

But then, it is not the first time you were wrong about things pertaining to Texas, Rags. Makes me wonder if you really live here.

Well, you stupid phuc, I had to drive seventy miles to find a vet that would CONSIDER working on my milk goats.

But this isn’t the first time you said stupid shit because you thought it would make you sound “authentic”. There are vets…I’ve known them since pre-vet school…in this area who are horse specialists, but you’d NEVER get them out to turn a breached calf.

So what if you have known people before they entered pre-vet school? That proves exactly what? And just because they specialize in the horse trade, doesn’t mean that they are so stupid they can’t treat a goat. And exactly where the hell do you live that a vet would not treat a goat (considered a SMALL animal) and be allowed to keep milk goats? Queen Sheila’s ward?

Perhaps you should learn to use the Yellow Pages. Vets who would treat goats (and what kind of person in Texas raises goats anyway besides wets) are not listed in the YP as “goat healers.”

Most of the vets I’ve met in my area are male. When we had horses and goats, we were served by a group that included men and women. The male vet that helped with my horses was kind of small, but a former college wrestler, so there’s that. One of the women gave my horse chiropractic treatments, which doesn’t look easy, and she did a great job. We go to a different vet for our small animals (he and his assistant are both male, btw).

This is not a new conception. The process of artificial degradation to the lowest common denominator has already manifested itself at various levels throughout society.

The denigration of individual dignity is a legacy of submitting to a poorly conceived policy of “affirmative action.” It may have been justified for one, perhaps two, generations; but, it long ago lost its legitimacy.

Let’s apply this to Women’s Studies, Art, Drama and Fashion. Also, let’s not stop there. Apply the same to LBGT studies.

In fact, let’s just fu*k up the whole education system so bad, that no one will ever learn anything.

One thing this will do, it will cut down the number of Asian, south Asian and African men in engineering, math and science. Oh, wait… does that result in Title IX colliding with Affirmative Action? Wowers! What then?

Speaking of Affirmative Action: I realize that any shade of Brown trumps White, but what is the pecking order for shades of Brown? African-American over Hispanic? But Sub-continent Indians and Pakistanis are much darker than many African-Americans I know. Does Asian trump White, or are they not really Brown? Or does it really depend on the neighborhood and who is in charge?

Let’s put a Catholic theologian in charge of LGBT studies, an ex-Seal in charge of “Women’s Studies,” and a WASP in charge of “African Studies.” Or are we going to pre-judge them all to be inappropriate?

“Protected groups” routinely demand (and get!) things that, in a sane world, would be considered even more outrageous.

heh. Don’t you think that having thousands of dollars of debt for a worthless degree like Women’s Studies is punishment enough? I know that whenever I see a resume with that degree on it I immediately throw it away and so do most of my hiring peers.

So go into Women’s Studies. Or Environmental Studies. The reward (a worthless BA) is certainly punishment enough and the value to society for self-identification as a useless drone is fantastic.

Don’t knock Environmental Studies. Those idiots have enormous power in California, and a lot of other places.

In California, one single tatooed, backwards-hat-wearing, hasn’t-bathed-in-a-week Environmental Studies wacko can shut down a hundred million dollar construction site, if s/he deems that a lizard, or bug, or birdie may possibly be subjected to potential hazard.

And what’s more, the enviro-wacko gets praised and promoted for it. While the builders are subject to fines and jail.

I have always hated all the regulations promulgated by our statist elite, knowing one day they would come for me.(Actually, they have a number of times in other areas.)

But now, as a computer science engineer by training, this makes it personal. It feels like a declaration of war on my profession.

Science & engineering, the platform for our growth as an entire country, the bedrock for so much of the advancement of productivity and civilization, and one of the true free areas of the economy and innovation.

Argh. Time to pop in Braveheart for motivation, then go make a couple donations to Ted Cruz, Mia Love, and others.

And forward this article to a few hundred of my closest acquaintances.

A friend of mine was telling me about the time they put a woman in charge of the computer system at a major Big Ten university. She had the great idea of shutting down the servers 8 hours a night to save on electricity. Never mind the fact that people do research around the clock. She figured they would save $5,000 a year. When someone pointed out that the probability of at least one server crashing when it was turned back on was 1, and that would cost at least $10,000, she was ready. The $10,000 would come out of the next budget year, so it didn’t matter. She was serious. She also, wasn’t fired, or demoted, or removed. They brought in a new number 2, and she didn’t get to make any more decisions.

A small engineering company hired me because the female Hispanic (two points, for all you Affirmative Action fans scoring at home!) wasn’t exactly “aces” when it came to actual — you know — engineering. She had morphed into a glorified secretary, although she was ferociously possessive of her title as an “Engineer.”

Oh, she had an engineering degree from a good school. (Insert appropriate comment here.) I was even bullied into treating her with deep respect, because she was a “really good engineer.” (You could probably stick another comment here, too.)

Yet despite all of this keen ability, the engineering department was a loss leader, even something of a laughingstock.

Then, magic! Which mysteriously happens when you hire someone (even if it’s a yucky oppressor-class white male) who can actually do the job. From loss leader to “you need to do more than break even” to “you need to make more of a profit.”

When business slowed down, guess who was canned. Hint: it wasn’t Little Miss Two Points.

How do we know beer has feminizing hormones and turns men into women? Well, if a man drinks too much beer he’ll either laugh at things that aren’t funny or cry for no reason at all. He doesn’t make any sense when he talks, and he can’t drive.

Our daughter competes with the guys in physics and advanced math classes … and she’s the first to tell you that she has to study harder than the boys because, on average, boys have more innate ability than girls in this area.

That’s the bald truth. And all this is a bad comb-over of social engineering.

Innate ability or innate interest? I wonder. In any case, the “affirmative action” policy was processed precisely wrong. It had no hope of preserving individual dignity. We should make every effort to not repeat progressive corruption.

Innate ability (and my first college girlfriend was a physics major at MIT). I don’t know so much about the math aspects, but 3-D visualization is a key ability here (and in my field of chemistry) and the statistical distributions between women and men are very different.

There are women who can do it (my girlfriend graduated on time), but they’re rarer than men.

In good news, we have an oversupply of scientists and in many fields engineers, so outside of biology and medicine this will neatly address that problem. But it will destroy Caltech, which unlike MIT didn’t water down its core curriculum to allow the admittance of a lot more women. MIT will sustain some serious damage, though.

It’s not just gender. This justice dept working with DoED takes the position that any disproportionality is presumed discriminatory. Minority, ethnicity, disability, rural (they don’t have a statute yet).

They have also created Discipline Based Education Research to determine what kind of classroom activities and pedagogy are necessary to get proportionality in outcomes.

They are pushing, using the accreditation agencies who say thank you for their lucrative govt monopoly, to redefine each of the disciplines in terms of learning outcomes. Doing what is specified will be presumed to mean knowledge exists.

No obligation to show that separately. It’s called the Tuning Process in Europe and employers do not like it at all.

Probably just need to remind employers who has the taxing and auditing power.

I have heard from reliable sources that the California Dept. of Transportation (Caltrans) test for “Senior Bridge Engineer” is now mostly Affirmative Action and Environmental (meaning: greenie wacko crap).

And when we drop a bridge and kill a bunch of people, it won’t be due to incompetent engineers. No, we’ll still have George Dubya to blame. And… the Republicans in Congress who, “Voted against infrastructure projects”.

No, because that bureaucratic AA hire will just “administer and program manage” the work of real engineers in private consulting companies. No one will let those kinds of engineers anywhere near a plan, let alone design anything or–g-d forbid–stamp it.

None of this would matter if not for government money dominating tuition financing. If we had a small government, restricted only to its enumerated powers, the corruption of education by crazy political agendas would not be as much of a problem.

People fear a limited, private monopoly, but eagerly welcome a comprehensive, authoritative monopoly. The ideological underpinning of this discrepancy is constructed from a paradox. As much as electing to exchange liberty for submission with benefits. It is engaged by fanatics and vulnerable individuals.

This is not as bad as it seems. Actually, it is good for a white male. We had the same thing happen in medicine. What happened, a doctor shortage. Why? Because women drop out in large proportion compared to men when it comes time to practice. Sure they take up a place all through the training process. But when it comes to practice, they just quit and are not willing to do the work. The result is a better job market for white males.

Then you have the concept of women being hired for the engineer and science positions. They will be hired, but then put in a place where they are not influencing the work environment. Sure, some women are great, but they are not plentiful. I know many women who finished at big engineer programs and can not get a job, especially in the oil field.

In a cynical way, this isn’t so bad. Reducing the number of seats for engineering education while at the same time casting doubt on another class of students (female) will end up increasing the value of male students. If, for no other reason, because debasing the initial “currency” of an female (or black, or Indian, or any other protected class) engineer, their degree, ends up shifting the value to engineers who are not of the protected class.

Rather like the old Jewish quotas ended up increasing the value of degrees of the Jews who were admitted because everyone knew that they were truly the best and the brightest to have made it through the bigot filter.

It is, of course, a terrible way to run a society but, as the old Soviets learned, people will not ignore the evidence of their senses. Inevitably one ends up with stereotypes that ultimately make it even worse for those the government is trying to protect.

Please, there is a simple solution. Each of us may now claim protected status simply declaring to be a member of a protected group. For example, is it a urine test, blood test, MRI, or what exactly to determine homosexuality. Of course, the answer is: there is no test. This is also the case for other variations like trans-sexuals. In order to get protected status, it is only necessary to make the declaration.

Try this: “I am a female in a male’s body. So, I should get title IX coverage. Please quota me into the electrical engineering program.”

We each only need to drop honesty. We each only need to drop our dignity. We each only need to become self-serving leftists.

Back then, some young women REALLY interested in science and engineering (you know, the ones who actually thought it was cool as opposed to those who were talked into it by some feminist “mentor” with an agenda) would apply to universities under both a male and female name. If accepted as a female but not a male (same test results, etc.), the school went into the discard pile.

Ah, how distant and naive were those days! Before feminists started looking for new worlds to conquer, and feminist “mentors” (who probably majored in “Women’s Studies” or or something equally “scientific”) started pushing girls into careers they had no interest in. For the cause. For the good of humanity. For the sisterhood!

It seems there is a lot of female bashing on this site today. First of all, I totally disagree with Title IX for STEM, and I never agreed with lowering physical standards in the military etc. to allow more women in.

But as a female chemical engineer who got my degree years ago, I find some of the ranting to be offensive. There are and always will be women who are capable of performing in engineering without quotas. For every “example” of an incompetent female you’ve known or heard of, I can give plenty of examples of males. It’s not a gender thing, so don’t try to make it into one.

What you call “bashing” seems more like anecdotal evidence of men taking it between the eyes because Powers That Be feel the need to give a woman/group of women special advantages.

Most of us have personally seen it. We get mad about it and some oh-so-superior woman drops in out of the sky, informs us she’s an expert, and tells us we’re a bunch of whining ninnies.

You feminists talk to us men in the same condescending, “there’s nothing wrong, you bunch of silly twits” way men talked to women not so long ago. You hated it, but we’re just supposed to take it. Because women are superior. (At least, that seems to be your message.)

And here I thought the goal was equality, not revenge. Silly li’l ol’ me.

Anytime I see the term “female bashing.” That’s a feminist catch-all when men are commenting on gender issues in a way feminists don’t like.

A woman’s gender-based assertions are bolstered by her professional qualifications; a man’s are discredited — unless he agrees with the woman. Somehow this country has reached a point where men, white men in particular, aren’t allowed comment about social issues without being accused of bigotry more-or-less automatically.

Also: “For every “example” of an incompetent female you’ve known or heard of, I can give plenty of examples of males.”

a) Classic feminism, demeaning and dismissing men’s experiences as invalid through use of “quotation marks,” as though these weren’t real and are unworthy of notice.

b) The feminist/liberal logical fallacy of going on the attack by changing the subject while pretending to answer the question: “I could name lots of [whatever] just as bad if not worse.” Nobody is arguing that all male engineers are great. We’re just saying that lots of women get an unfair advantage.

You have a right to disagree. But just because you do doesn’t mean our comments are “bashing” and our real-life examples are invalid.

And you’re calling me touchy? Pardon me for not being aware of the feminist catch-all lingo that you find so offensive.

I don’t have a problem with men commenting on bigotry. My father, my brothers, my husband and my sons are all white males. I understand. But there is a difference between bashing specifically and bashing in general, and in my opinion, that has been crossed by some here. And yes, it does make a difference when most of the comments are negative, which distorts reality when it comes to women engineers.

But as a female chemical engineer who got my degree years ago, I find some of the ranting to be offensive. There are and always will be women who are capable of performing in engineering without quotas.

Unfortunately, the history of STEM is that women did not receive opportunities and recognition commensurate with their capabilities. Lise Meitner. Rosalind Franklin. Emmy Noether.

For every “example” of an incompetent female you’ve known or heard of, I can give plenty of examples of males. It’s not a gender thing, so don’t try to make it into one.

Agreed. It’s primarily not a gender thing. It’s a Big Government thing. And treating identity groups as “classes” is a not very subtle quasi-Marxist thing.

It’s an example of a State which, instead of addressing a societal problem with minimal disruption of individual liberty, uses that problem as a pretext to maximally expand its power.

Lise Meitner got her PhD in 1905 and died in 1968. Rosalind Franklin got her PhD in 1945 and died (far too early, of ovarian cancer) in 1958. Emmy Noether got her PhD in 1907 and died in 1935. They were all born in Europe and did their major work there. Do you have any examples of unappreciated female STEM workers from America and the second half of the 20th century?

“But as a female chemical engineer who got my degree years ago, I find some of the ranting to be offensive.”

As a female astrophysicist (Yes, I have a Ph.D. in Physics) I find this possible new quota requirement extremely offensive.

I am already looked at with suspicion because of affirmative action. My work has to be 10 times better than my male counterparts in order to be respected or taken seriously — yes, because of affirmative action.

Now, with quotas in place, *no* woman in any science field will be respected. As it should be…….

We are shooting ourselves in the foot in order to play political games. We are their own worst enemies. The derision here by the posters is deserved. Get ready, it will only get worse in the work place since we will be viewed as token “XX” placeholders lacking the ability to do the jobs for which we were hired.

Guess what…. the small number of men that will be in the field will then only hire men because they will be guaranteed that they had to be the best and brightest in order to escape the “quota”. They’ll prefer this to taking a chance that some woman they may hire was pushed through the university system because of gender and not talent.

Exactly. It is the same issue for all minorities that are afforded significant quotas–Blacks, Hispanics, American Indians. Unless they “earn” a self-identifying degree like African-American Studies so society knows they have nothing to offer, whenever a member of a protected class gains a degree they still haven’t earned the unofficial credential. So while I will respect a STEM degree now for any unprotected class, a protected class member must have evidence that they weren’t just a token graduate passed in order to keep the ratio acceptable to the bureaucrats.

Erk, you’re right. I don’t often think of this because my women and minority peers at MIT deserved to be there (MIT doesn’t accept anyone unless they think they can do the work, and doesn’t have to reach down to get “adequate” numbers of women and minority applicants, who strongly self-select before they apply anyway) and had little trouble demonstrating their competence (to me, at least).

However, the “the small number of men that will be in the field” will have to hire women or they’ll get into trouble with the government, at least if the company is of any descent size. The ones who can really do the work will be golden, the others will have to be paid but not depended upon. When it gets extended past undergraduate degrees, it’s going to get very ugly and I guess the NSF et. al.’s decades long campaign to supress science worker wages is going to less successful going forward.

Lina, I spent some time at MIT. I found the atmosphere positive and respectful. However, that hasn’t been my overall experience at other institutions.

“However, the “the small number of men that will be in the field” will have to hire women or they’ll get into trouble with the government, at least if the company is of any descent size. The ones who can really do the work will be golden, the others will have to be paid but not depended upon.”

Agreed. However, the hiring process for women will necessarily become more discriminatory. We will be initially placed in low paying positions initially until we demonstrate that we are equal to our male counterparts.

Affirmative Action drags down the whole system and reduces the quality of education. As me move from merit based admittance policies to quota/diversity based policies, the general quality of the students goes down. The real-world demands that “only the best students with the best ideas will succeed, regardless of race or gender. The marketplace is the ultimate meritocracy, and no social engineering can ever change that.”

Larry Summers was talking about an elite population – those scientists that are four standard deviations or more above average, where there does begin to be a separation between the genders. BTW, men also dominate the extreme low end of the spectrum, so that gender averages are equal.

But engineers are primarily 1 to maybe 3 standard deviations above the norm. There really is no separation in that range, and no reason why women who have the desire can’t perform in engineering. Unfortunately, too many people extrapolate Larry Summer’s point to suggest that women can’t do science. It’s ignorant.

Personally, I am strongly against any Title IX STEM policy. I back merit-based admittance.

“There really is no separation in that range, and no reason why women who have the desire can’t perform in engineering.”

I agree.

When our daughter was applying to colleges, my wife urged me to call the engineering department at UCLA and ask what they thought her chances of being accepted might be. When I was asked what her SAT math score was, I told the professor and he said her score was quite high and would probably put her in the top 10% of their applicants. I got off the phone and was then berated by my wife because her score was actually higher than the one I told him. 🙂

Our daughter is such a goofball though, so I don’t know how she’ll do in the real world!

As for Larry Summers, I just found it ridiculous that female STEM professors (at Harvard! no less … the cream of the crop) would almost faint at the mere suggestion of an idea with which they might not agree. It’s a damn university where ideas are supposed to be currency.

As one who has been in the engineering profession for over 30 years, I can tell you this will be like trying to stop the wind from blowing. The engineering profession has been aggressively recruiting females since the 1980’s. Yet the percentage of females in engineering is minor compared to other groups. It just isn’t natural for most women to study engineering. Those that do are usually great engineers. Geez, seems like we should promote any and all students who want and have the aptitude for the sciences to pursue that career, regardless of their gender, race, etc., etc.!!

You’re ignoring how Title IX gets implemented, by denying entrance to men in addition to trying to get more women involved, which as you imply is not something we can particularly improve upon at this date.

You’re right. Title IX arrives at its desired ratios by promoting the desired sex and dismissing the undesired sex. Unless they find some way of forcing women into STEM fields, departments will find that the only way to admit a male student is to recruit a female student, i.e. classes will consist of n females (as many as can be persuaded to enroll) and n males (as many as are permitted to enroll). The only appropriate reprisal is to demand that the same standards apply to Humanities, so that the number of women who can be allowed to major in English is limited to the number of men who can be forced to major in English. Obviously, this will null out departments like African-American Studies, as very few whites want to major in this dead-end field and the faculty will force the rest out in six weeks.

I’d also like to re-define which students are considered “most deserving” of merit scholarships. It should be primarily those kids with the interest and aptitude, instead of those who do the most community service, or whose parents make the least money.

The problem isn’t willingness to accept, it’s a pipeline problem. If the issue is NOT innate talent or interest, how do we get more women interested and excelling in the STEM fields? Seems to me the place to start is grade school, not college…but leave it to gov’t to get it bass-ackwards.

As someone who is in academia, I can tell you with certainty that universities are already bending backwards to accept women over men in the name of diversity. Agree with it or not, what on earth makes gov’t think that mandating equal numbers will change the number of qualified female applicants??

About 40 years ago, a Detroit-area utility incurred the wrath of some Political Correctness Bureau in the Federal government: not enough female line workers! You know, the people who climb utility poles in all weathers. So the Feds set a quota, and the utility was — um –encouraged (ahem) to launch (at their own expense, naturally) an extensive recruiting program for women to become line workers.

Years, and who knows how many thousands (millions?) of dollars later, the quota wasn’t even close to filled. The Feds had pushed as hard as they could, and even they admitted defeat and backed off.

The moral of the story: there are just some jobs that girls/women don’t want. We’ve been pushing this “women in science and engineering” thing for better than two decades now, and the feminists are still complaining there aren’t enough women to suit them in the sciences.

How can you say such a thing?! Why, I know any number of women who have a pair of climbing jacks under the bed and cry themselves to sleep every night because no one will let them be high-tension workers.

[…] STEM fields, and, by extension, a minimum number of female enrollees. (Hat tips: Instapundit and Legal Insurrection.) While the Obama Administration dresses this up as “anti-discrimination,” what […]

It gets a bit tiresome, especially when you’re a woman who’s in that top 1% for math. I left that world over a decade ago, and have been enjoying corporate life since. The corporate world is much more amenable, and you get to work on problems people actually care about. It’s not my problem that math/science academia doesn’t like their chances for getting dates amongst grad students.